


Complicated.

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Post 5:05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can only live in the ones she loved</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complicated.

_Many warriors of the inevitable confrontation are among us now – but before they can be considered soldiers, they must be regarded as recruits._

_And the expectation must be that they shall be unwilling._

-       ZFT

 

 

“How did you get here?”   

How did you come to this, she means.  If he focuses his eyes to the left of Olivia, keeps the angle of her neck in the periphery of his vision, then Peter can count the jump in her carotid artery.  Accelerated.  Agitated.  Her pupils have dilated by point o five of a millimetre.  Olivia had looked the same way seven months after pregnancy - when she curled around his body in the middle of the night, skin chilled from nursing Etta - and told him she was returning to work.  Her muscles had been stiff, her voice corded with fear and determination.  Olivia was a restless mother, her attention divided, one gaze fixed on the horizon.  That’s okay, he had murmured into her hair.  That’s okay, he repeated, until she believed him.

Etta threw up on his chest.  She’d swing a fist at his chin when he fed her expressed milk, or go cross-eyed when he kissed her nose. She would gurgle at shadows on the wall, and fall asleep on his torso, small body splayed like a frog, one ear pressed to his heartbeat.  Olivia would come home by five, eyes soft, and press a hand to Etta’s spine.  _You don’t mind?_   Olivia had asked, troubled, and he said carefree, _What’s there to mind?_ He’d swing his little girl up on his shoulders the next day at the park - the following days to come - the better for Etta to see the world.

“How did you come to this?” she repeats, despairingly.

His vision is cool blue.  Peter’s calm, calmer than he’s been in his entire life.   The world branches before him, splits off into a series of events.  I love you so much, and he’s grateful Olivia had the grace to let their daughter know it as an indisputable fact.  It’s a matter of importance, he thinks, that children know these things. _“I love you so much.”_  Blood between their fingers and a slippery bullet passed between them - and then Olivia stood up and walked away - the first in this, as she was the first in everything else.  “It doesn’t hurt,” he tries to assuage her. 

It won’t hurt until they take it out.

(The world branches, doubles, triples, expanding like a funhouse mirror.  In 29 per cent of possible realities, Olivia and Walter never discover the implant at all.  In 51 per cent, they strap Peter down, drug him with a dart, a tea, a casual brush of the hand.  They extract the tech and Peter twitches like a puppet with the strings cut, bleeds out fast and furious, dies on the table, like the observer he originally stole it from.  The remaining 20 per cent of possibility is in flux, grey with chaos and unforeseen events threaded through it, incomprehensible to his naked eye).   Peter breathes out sharply, adjusts his stance, moves the centre of his weight to the left - calm, calm, calm, he reminds himself - and watches Olivia’s hands.  He’s not ready to be drugged yet; he’s not ready to submit until the war’s over. 

“How long have you known?”

Olivia’s mouth parts softly, a hectic flush creeps up her cheekbones.  Deliberately, she opens both hands, wiggles her fingertips as if to imply no needles here. “Is this supposed to help us?” she asks instead.

The boy is important, August told September, September told Walter, Walter told Olivia.  Somewhere along the line, they forgot to mention it to Peter.  

He blinks rapidly, lets the order of events flow into a stacked deck. _The boy has served his purpose_ , December intoned when the bridge was first created and the Machine - quantum entangled across multiple realities and once turned on - would exist and always exist.  The Observer’s, gifted with a safe haven to invade, had been gunning for Peter’s non-existence ever since.  In the grand scheme of the board game, he’s obsolete, a remnant, and without Etta the only priority he has left is keeping Olivia and Walter alive at all costs.  It’s those two, Peter knows, who will save the world, the ‘tactician’ and his ‘fail-safe’.   He only has one task to perform now.  Windmark is at the top of it.

She’s angry.  Her heartbeat lurches, accelerates into double-time.  Sweat has beaded at Olivia’s temples, on her upper lip.  Her eyes, gold and green, all the colours of the prairie, harden.  Peter tilts his head.  He hasn’t seen anger on Olivia’s countenance for quite some time.  “If it keeps the Observer’s off your trail, then yes, it helps.  If it allows Walter to compile his plan, for you to implement it, then yes, it also helps.”  He thought that would have been self-evident.  Her fingers, once splayed, curl into fists. 

“I’m trying really hard not to hit you right now.”

There was a seventy-eight per cent chance she would have, diminished significantly when Olivia chose to make it a statement instead; if he points this out of course, there’s a hundred per cent possibility Olivia will carry through regardless.  Dial it down a notch, he thinks distantly, and tries on a smile, adds a few contractions.  “S’okay.  Like in the pocket verse, I’m only using it when needed.”

“Does Walter know?”

“Nah, he’s…preoccupied…has a few concerns on his own plate.  Olive, I swear to you, it evens out the playing field.  Like Etta said, one Observer at a time if need be.”

“Etta’s dead,” Olivia says brutally.  “It’s the living who concern me.”

They stare at one another. 

He stands loosely, calmly, and waits for half a beat to see if Olivia will react any further.  Her expression twists and Peter thinks, remotely, he failed some test.  “We need you,” he tries to explain, desperate for her to understand, and touches Olivia’s cheek.  “There’s no one in this reality – or the next – who I trust more to win this war.  It’s _you,_ Olivia.  It’s you and Walter.”

“And you?” she asks, tonelessly.

Peter’s collateral damage.

“I’ll do what’s necessary.”  He promises her.  He’ll keep them alive.  He’ll fight the Observers until he falls, and like Etta, when he _does_ fall, he’ll take as many with him as possible. 

 

***

 

Peter doesn’t dream at night.  It’s not a result of the newly inserted Observer tech.  Simply put, he hasn’t dreamt since he was nine years old.  He falls into sleep, devoid of sound or colour, empty of imagination, trained for it since childhood.  Olivia, he knows, is the complete opposite.  She startles awake with a visible gasp, an indrawn breath, with the sheets tangled around her lower body and her muscles coiled tight.  She goes from zero to complete wakefulness when Peter’s still stubbing his toe and squinting against the morning light.  Once upon a time, she’d tell Etta her dreams, embellished, her voice rising and falling with the cadence of a storyteller.  _I’ve had practice with my niece,_  Olivia would confess slyly, and pass Etta her toast and vegemite to share. Peter hasn’t dreamed since Walter conditioned him not to.   

Except now, he starts to dream. 

He blames the tech at first.  Revisiting memories.  Etta, no longer a three year old seated in a high chair, vegemite smeared across her face, but a twenty-four year old woman with her bottom lip caught between her teeth.  The colours are not as he remembers them. 

“Ashrem?”  Peter repeats, and flips the report over.  He’s not calm.  He hasn’t been calm since Etta found him.  He’s hopeful, excited, and there’s a low buzz of expectation in his belly as he catches Olivia’s eye, as he grins at her.  “You wrote her name in the official report as Ashrem?”

“It’s a typo!” Etta declares.  “Honest!  The resistance knew Astrid’s name….” She looks from one to another, including Olivia in the conversation even as the older woman hangs back.

“Oh,” he says, bemused.  “I can’t wait to show her.”

“Astrid will see the humour?”  Etta asks, hopefully.

“Nope.  She’ll probably beat me over the head with the report.”

He remembers his own emotion, Etta’s snort, but he doesn’t remember this warmth shot through with reticence, this far-away vision. Peter wakes up violently, heart thundering, the sheets fisted in his hands.  A shot of pure adrenalin mixed with pain.  The door’s ajar when he could have sworn he fell asleep with it closed.  And for a minute, he’s raw, bleeding, sobbing Etta’s name on a concrete floor.  Olivia’s walking away – the steady click of her boots marking her retreat – the first in this, as she was the first to walk away from Etta twenty-one years earlier.  He knows the patterns of her mourning.

But he never had to figure out his own process because Etta wasn’t dead; Peter wouldn’t believe it until he held proof of body.  His breath rattles in his chest; skin tight with fever, and proof of body is no mercy at all. 

He stays awake the rest of the night.  Until his vision wavers, changes hue.

 

***

 

“You’re being selfish,” Olivia observes calmly. 

She checks the clip, smacks the butt end against the table then slams it home.  Olivia fingers the trigger guard then slips the weapon into her thigh holster and looks up.  Her hair is pulled back tightly, braided down her spine.  Her face looks sharp, eyes keen.  There’s a school of thought that says laying your life down for another is the ultimate act of selflessness.  Saying he’s ready to die for either one of them, Peter thinks, won’t win him any points with Olivia at the moment. 

“It got us out of the pocket verse,” he repeats.  “It’s necessary.”  Olivia asked him to join her in the resistance twenty-one years ago – at the time - it wasn’t a fight Peter was interested in, not when every instinct cried _find Etta_  instead.  Irritated, his vision cracks into colour, reforms into blue.  “I’m ready to do my part now, sweetheart.”

Olivia looks up sharply.   Her eyes gleam.  “You don’t use the tech unless I say so.”

“Sure,” he agrees. The problem with having the full attention of Olivia Dunham is that suddenly, _you have the full attention of Olivia Dunham._   She straightens as if tapped with a cattle prod. 

“You did _not_ just lie to me.”

They haven’t slept together in over two decades, and he thinks, startled, that he forgot just how beautifully dangerous Olivia could be, act, sound.  “It filters through sometimes,” he admits slowly.  “Unintended.” 

“How often?”

“At the moment?  It’s like staring upward from the bottom of a lake.  Statistics, mathematical probabilities…they’re coming along faster than they should.”

She looks away, elbows braced on her thighs, hands clasped between her kneecaps.  “What if I turn it off?  The same way I turned off the Machine’s defensive capabilities?  What would you do then, Peter?” 

It sounds like a threat, and he can’t read her expression.  There hasn’t been the slightest hint of Olivia’s cortexiphan abilities since the bullet entered her skull two decades ago. “What?”

“I don’t know, you promised you wouldn't leave me alone.  I’m feeling a combination of love and out-right terror at the moment,” Olivia says, and adds sarcastically.  “Oddly enough, I’m not used to feeling _both_ of those emotions from the one person.”

“Don’t.  Not yet, Olivia.  This can help, you _know_ it can.” There are fine winkles on her face, sun-lines, laughter lines, her skin is tanned golden, her leather jacket battered black, jeans worn blue.  Blinded by contrast colours, Peter blinks at her.   

“Don’t use it unless I say so.”  She repeats.  The tone brooks no argument.  This is Walter and Belly’s favourite pupil, the strongest of a group of children designed to fight, the one the kids deferred to naturally.  Olivia pauses then amends.  “And don’t lie to me again, Peter.”

They recover the next tape in Georgetown.  Olivia shoots dead one Observer from a distance of twenty yards.  Peter kills a second when he materializes beside Walter, seismic ripples in the air alerting Peter to the Observer’s imminent arrival.  The fight is brutal.  She returns with the tape, a cut on her forehead, and a weapons cache stashed under her arm.  “Everything okay?” she double-checks.

“Adequate.”  Peter reports. 

Olivia passes the bag to Walter without a word and takes Peter by the wrist. She sleeps in his room that night; bedroll bundled close, stripped down to her jeans and bra.  He dreams.  He dreams in technicolour, in bright lense-flares, and by secondary vision.  He sees himself, Etta, Walter, Astrid too, feels muted sorrow and a joy not of his own devising, the card-game filled with cheating and double bluffs.

“What was she like?” Etta asks, and tilts the computer screen around, trying to find a better angle.

A riotous mass of brown curls, delicate features; Peter can look at Elizabeth now without the bone-deep ache, recognize how beautiful she actually was, something he never noticed as a kid.  Elizabeth was gorgeous in the classical sense.  Technically, she should have been out of Walter’s league.  Something he must have inherited from his dad, because technically, Olivia should have been  _way_ out of Peter’s league, too. 

“Complicated,” Walter answers softly.

Peter wonders which Elizabeth he’s talking about, the one who raised him, who committed suicide - the one on the other side who birthed him, fiercely independent - or the one he never met, who died scant days after her own son's death.  He looks at Etta, examining her intently, and can’t see Elizabeth in any of her features.  “She was a coward; and the bravest woman – “ he glances at Olivia, and amends – “well, _one_ of the bravest women I’ve ever met.  She was fiercely loyal, sad.  Elizabeth could made you believe anything she ever said.”

“She was a character?” Etta guesses.

“And a killer poker player.”

“Well, I guess we live in the ones we love,” Etta says in disgust, and throws her cards down.

“Woot,” Peter brags, and eyes his winnings dubiously.  “More egg-sticks for me.”

Etta glances at him sideways, hair a curtain of light.  Her smile was pure imp.

 

***

 

Peter wakes up with his eyes wet, with his chest hollow.  “I hate this,” he says against Olivia’s throat.  She presses against him, draped from anklebone to chest. 

“Ssh,” she gentles.  He clings to her, unashamed. Olivia tightens her grip.  “I know.  Please don't leave me alone in this.”  She whispers, brokenly.  "Etta can only live in the ones she loved."

 

 


End file.
